Ready for Nashville Country

Only a few short years ago, she was an unknown Australian-born singer with an unusually funny name - recording easy listening music for English audiences.

Today, all of her records become hits. She is the queen of music. Olivia Newton-John an industry within herself with very few goals left to reach has carried her throne to Nashville where she is ready for the real country.

The atmosphere here, she said as she relaxed in MCA's Music City offices, is fantastic, and the musicians are all really interested. It's like being at home. I feel really at home here. I'm a person who likes to feel at home, she explained. And that's what I like about country music. I started out singing folk music, and when I began recording, my songs would hit the pop charts in England. Then we noticed they began hitting the country charts in the U.S., songs like Banks of the Ohio, If Not For You and, of course, Let Me Be There, the song that started it all.

So today - Although her songs are played on rock stations, top 40 stations, and pop stations, she looks to real success when they climb the charts in the country field. As a result, she plans Nashville as her recording home. In the future she will do almost all of her records in Tennessee and so told newsmen at an afternoon press conference way back on July 14. We only planned on recording a single here, she said. But this atmosphere is so congenial we decided to stay. It's an incredible feeling. The work turned into on album. What was begun in Los Angeles didn't jell, and her first U.S. recorded album moved to Nashville in July. What a pleasant surprise, she said, flashing a toothpaste commercial smile.

Actually, Olivia had slipped into town a few days earlier the latter part of June and recorded seven songs at Buzz Cason's Creative Workshop studio on Azalea Place. Then it grew into an album. The all-day, behind locked doors session marked the first time the singer who won a Grammy for Best Female Country Performance of 1973 had been supported by the Nashville Sound. Music City musicians on the sessions included Bergen White, Steve Gibson, Chris Christian, Shane Keister, Larry London, and Joe Osborne.

While in Nashville, Miss Newton- John did make one personal appearance at the Kroger Store in Green Hills. We got in my car and were driving out to Chris Christian's house for a cookout, said Chic Doherty, MCA vice president. We stopped at the grocery, and Olivia and I went in. She grabbed a grocery cart and started loading it down with hamburger, sausage and hot dogs. No one stopped her, he said, but I overheard several people whispering back and forth, Naw, that's not her.

During the interview session, quite naturally, Miss Newton-John was asked about criticism of her too-pop image by the Association of Country Entertainers. It was so long ago; I think I've said all I want to about it... I think I was just the scapegoat, or the person whose name they used. I've talked to Dolly Parton, too, and she says the press blew it up, that it wasn't as bad as they said it was.

Did she ever say she disliked country music Of course not, she replied. What I might have said is that I'm not strictly a country singer ... I sing songs that I like.

But whatever the situation, she made it plain everybody can assume she will be recording in Nashville from now on. Unlike some of her cohorts, however, she has no plans to move to Music City at the moment. It is plainly obvious: fans like Olivia's music. They like the way she records it. Things have happened so fast. I'm knocked out by all the attention. Country artists like Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn come to my shows, send me flowers, and everything, she explained.

Boris Weintraub of the Washington Star had her sized up a bit differently, when he wrote recently: The trouble is that each hit sounds just about like the hit that preceded it and the one that is about to follow it. Each is expertly crafted as a two-and-a-half-minute piece of manufactured plastic; each sounds as though it has interchangeable parts strings, flute, deep bass- voice backup, high falsetto-voice back which can be pulled out of one hit and plugged into another, without anyone knowing the difference. He cited Let Me Be There because I Honestly Love You but Have You Never Been Mellow so If You Love Me, Let Me Know, Please Mister Please. Sort of like that.

It doesn't bother the lovely young lady, who looks even slimmer than she appears in photographs, and with a new, sleeker haircut. I've done about everything I set out to do, she said. But maybe I would like to write some songs, or maybe be in a movie. However, she was quick to add, I probably have more aptitude as a lyricist than as a composer.

Olivia, who has no wedding plans at this time, was asked if there were a male artist she would like to record with. Well, she responded, I've recorded with John Denver and that was great. I'd like to do that again, but I used to work with a guy I think you'll be hearing a lot from: Cliff Richard on Rocket.

Richard, who is featured on Elton John's Rocket label, has a single out called Devil Woman. Maybe they are both ready for Nashville Country. It's something you can't put your finger on. But the successes are there by the scores ... as if Olivia's career needed any type of boost. She is a B-I-G one-woman industry.